Short sighted

The first week into the new school year and Boo came home from school in tears.  He said he couldn't see the whiteboard used by the teacher, despite him sitting at the front of the class.  So it was off to the optometrist for an eye check.

After identifying and not identifying letters from the alphabet in various sizes, it was concluded he is short sighted (-2.5 in both eyes for those familiar with optic prescriptions) and needs to wear glasses permanently.  For a self conscious child, this was a death sentence and there were more tears.  He didn't want to pick out a set of frames and in the kids range there wasn't much that appealed to our boy.  In the end he settled on a pair of Oakley frames and opted to have transition lenses that block out UV light and darken to sunglasses when outside.  We also needed to get a special sports strap so he could wear them when he played tennis.

When at last his glasses were ready for pick up and he popped them on, it was like he was walking in a whole new world.  He hadn't realised how clear the world looked with 20/20 vision.  He had thought his blurry world was normal.  Bless him... and it was this realisation that turned his frown upside down and he now happily wears his glasses.

Meanwhile, we as parents are trying to figure out how he has coped for so long in his blurry world, how we didn't notice he needed his eyes checked, how his teachers hadn't picked up on it, and how his tennis coach hadn't noticed either. 

In breaking news, he has now had his glasses for two weeks and his tennis coach has commented on the improvement in his play since wearing them.